The owners of an internet-famous dog duo had to boot their little brother, explaining the “heartbreaking decision” to fans in painstaking detail.
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The Instagram account “Lulu and Tuktuk” boasts over 440,000 followers on Instagram and 638,000 on TikTok. It follows the adventures of two lovable pooches: Lulu, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and TukTuk, a massive American Bulldog with a head the size of a prize-winning pumpkin.
To the delight of fans, the canine duo was recently joined by a baby brother, a cute puppy named Rocco. Just last week, the account posted adorable footage of little Rocco seemingly having the time of his life alongside a nonplussed TukTuk.
However, the owners of the famous dogs, Matt and Lexi, recently took to Instagram to share that they’d decided to rehome the new puppy in an extremely lengthy post.
Spoiler: it involves talk of dog semen.
Owners of Instagram-Famous Dogs Explain Reasons to Rehomed New Puppy
The couple shared that this update has been “personally painful” and difficult to process. They explained that Tuktuk was originally intended for breeding, and despite their efforts to change this, frozen semen was used earlier this year to produce a litter… a decision they had “no control over.” What they could control was taking one of the puppies themselves, with plans to find him a loving home as a companion.
“That puppy was Rocco,” they revealed.
They added that despite “spending weeks trying to find the right family for Rocco,” they ultimately chose to take him in themselves. “We met him and fell in love with him immediately,” they shared, describing him as “playful, extremely smart, lovable, and incredibly cuddly.” The couple admitted they “went all in for him,” choosing to show only the good moments publicly, as they “had so much hope that things would get better.”
They continued, “There were warning signs too. The move from 2 to 3 dogs was no joke.” While Tuktuk tolerated Rocco, Lulu struggled. As time went on, the dynamic wasn’t improving. “We went backwards and forwards constantly; We cried; We changed our minds.”
The Many Steps Which Led to the Decision to Rehome the New Puppy
Not wanting to make such a huge decision based on emotions alone, they brought in a professional trainer and behaviorist for an in-home assessment. “She delivered some hard truths,” they shared, forcing them to ask the question they’d been avoiding: were they trying to make it work for the dogs, or because letting little Rocco go felt impossible?
“We’ve given our dogs the happiest and most loving home we possibly can, and even though letting him go has been the absolute worst thing, we wanted Rocco to have the same,” they added.
“He was still at the beginning of such an important stage of his development,” and keeping him longer just to “be sure” wasn’t fair to him either.
“So we made the heartbreaking decision to let Rocco go to his forever home.”
The final slide in the epic journey was a cute snapshot of Rocco alongside his new sister at his new forever home.
Fans of the Rehomed New Puppy May Have A Lot to Look Forward To…
Despite the sad news, Matt and Lexi gave fans some hope in the caption to their post.
“You might still see some Rocco memories popping up on our page,” they wrote. “Our content is usually scheduled about 2 weeks in advance, so we’ve still been sharing some of those moments while going through all of this ourselves.”
On top of that, Rocco might just get an account of his own…
“We’ve encouraged Rocco’s new mama to start an Instagram account too, so if you fell in love with him like we did and want to watch him grow up and adventure with his big sister, we’ll share their handle soon 🥺,” they promised fans.